


In Trouble Deep

by gloss



Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: Freudian Field Day, Gen, God Is a Real Dick, Ianthe Tridentarius is Her Own Warning, No Lesbians Die, Nuclear Family Drama, One Flesh Many Ends, POV Gideon Nav, Sharing a Body, The River Is Weird AF, Weirdness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-11
Updated: 2020-09-11
Packaged: 2021-03-07 07:27:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26349325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gloss/pseuds/gloss
Summary: Gideon gets grounded in a nightmare realm of nuclear family suburban hell.Canon divergent from the very end ofHarrow the Ninth, specifically Gideon's final section.
Relationships: John Gaius | Necrolord Prime & Gideon Nav & Ianthe Tridentarius
Comments: 7
Kudos: 37
Collections: We Die Like Fen 4: We Lived to Die Afen





	In Trouble Deep

**Author's Note:**

  * For [inquisitor_tohru](https://archiveofourown.org/users/inquisitor_tohru/gifts).



> Enormous thanks to @china_shop for help with NZ references and G for beta-reading; any mistakes or incongruities or awkwardnesses are my own.
> 
> (Redated for author reveals.)

The River rose, and rose higher, while its bottom tilted up. All direction was lost. Currents swirled, multiple stomae winked open, sucking in fluid, spewing out others. Gideon-in-Harrow drowned, and could not die, and the river carried her far. When it receded, she found herself here.

In neatly-groomed suburbia, terraced houses and cul-de-sac after cul-de-sac. Faceless inhabitants enacting constant conformity. Camazotz, Levittown, Remuera. No escape, nowhere to go, and where would you go, anyway? Why leave the bosom of your loving nuclear family?

"You're not going anywhere," Gaius told her when she woke up in the canopy bed in her strawberry-pink bedroom. "Sorry to have to do this, but you leave me no choice. You are 100% grounded, kid."

This is nothing. This is _easy_. Gideon grew up in dark, cold cells. Frequently Crux chained her to the walls, just because he wanted to. So, honestly, this is a cakewalk.

Physically, anyway. She's got food and a decent bed. Even a plex-and-foam rapier to practice with. Of course, her bed is in a room wall-papered with rosebud garlands, hung with posters for sensitive, floppy-haired douchebags whose music probably sucks as much as their faces. Whoever decorated this place, it's like they don't even _know_ her.

To get that abundant delicious food, she has to survive this absurd emotional torture: playing house with Necrolord "Dad" Fuckhead and Stepmonster Tridentarius.

She misses tasteless protein goop and Crux's leering hell-face, and that's the worst tragedy yet, just about, in her young and already overstuffed-with-horror life.

She paces up and down the worn carpet. It's hard to make out, but it's dark red and pearly gray. Probably features cavorting skeletons and overblown flowers. Maybe it was woven from the silken locks of sacrificed infants. Maybe? Most definitely.

"Have a seat," Gaius says. He and Ianthe are already sitting at the cozy dining table, looking at her expectantly.

"This is worse than prison, you know that?"

"I hardly think so."

"And this _sucks_ as an interrogation, by the way! What are you two, Nicey Nice Cop Who's Actually a Cosmic Bastard and Kinda Bitchy Cop?"

Gaius and Ianthe exchange a look. As it lingers, it becomes, instead, a Look. They don't even want her here, so why are they keeping her here?

"Just kick her back to the bottom," Ianthe suggests. 

Gaius shakes his head almost imperceptibly. "What did we say about slaughtering our enemies?"

"It's a lot of fun and, bonus, almost always necessary," Ianthe replies promptly.

Gideon's head hurts from having to listen to all this ossified unmitigated bullshit. She knocks her head against the edge of the bookcase a couple times, hoping to displace the crap with a little honest pain, before Gaius says, "Stop that, kiddo."

"No, no, listen to your little lady," she says. "Put me out of my misery. We'd all be better off."

"YOU don't mean that," Gaius says. The _way_ he says it, it sounds casual, almost like a stray observation, but there is a force to it. Something dragging along beneath the words themselves that is persuasive, even final.

Harrow alway swore necros could not read minds. Nor can Lyctors, so far as they knew.

But Gaius is something else, isn't he?

He could be reading the truth of her thoughts, or he could be convincing her that it is the truth. Shaping her thoughts to his own specifications. She doesn't like any of those choices.

Gideon squints at him. "You're not the boss of me."

Ianthe barks out a laugh and Gaius looks vaguely amused, for about half a moment.

"We know you're upset," he says. "Please, just sit down. Eat a little. Let's talk this out."

"There's nothing to talk about!" Gideon yells. She kind of wants to punch the wall, but she knows that Harrow's weenie arm and delicate hand couldn't take it. "This is just the stupidest, creepiest thing ever." She shakes Harrow's hair out of her eyes and takes a breath. "And I grew up in, you know. A literal hole in the ground staffed by bones and senescent nuns."

"Such fancy language," Ianthe puts in. Her chin in her palm, she's wearing one of the original Third cav's shimmery dresses, with big poofy petticoat underneath and a trim little apron cut low enough to show the tops of her nipples. She's Mrs. Cleaver, porn star. She turns to Gaius and asks, "Is that something that can happen? She's learning Nonagesimus's vocabulary?"

"Get bit," Gideon tells her.

Ianthe bares her teeth, then makes a creepy-ass _chop-chop_ noise by opening and rapidly closing her mouth. While Gaius is looking sadly at Gideon, Ianthe leans in behind him and mimes chomping on his earlobe. 

Without turning, he brushes her away, then draws her back in, slipping his arm around her waist.

Gideon makes a retching noise. "You two suck."

"Can't we just have _one_ peaceful meal?" he asks. He's doing that thing with his face, pulling it long and furrowed, that makes him resemble the actual human being with feelings he (probably) never was.

"Yes, sweetheart," Ianthe says, rubbing the back of his hand. "Just this once?"

Gideon renews the miming of vomit, adding a stagger and weave to her performance.

"Sit down," Gaius says, all trace of patience vanished.

"Okay," she says and yanks her chair out from the table. "But I'm not calling her 'Mom'."

Nodding amiably, he nudges a plate of food towards Gideon. "Fair enough. Eat up, though, would you?"

On his other side, Ianthe rolls her eyes. "Like I want anything from you."

Gideon stretches luxuriously, hooking one elbow over the back of her chair as she trails her hand up and down Harrow's (scrawny, fragile, beloved) torso. "Not what you said last night. Last month. I lose track."

"As if," Ianthe says. She spears some meat and a stalk of green vegetable on her fork and feeds it to the Emperor.

"I was there," Gideon says, while chewing her own food, "I saw how you looked at her. How you still do. I'm just saying."

"Girls..." 

"No, no, this is important," Gideon says. "I mean, you've got to know she's using you, right? That's clear to all of us?"

"Shut up," Ianthe says, sweet as cyanide.

"Seconds, buddy?" Gaius asks, holding up a serving platter. The carcass of something — a bird? — is half-carved on it. Gideon tries not to think about how balls-old ancient that bird is. Was. Poor old thing.

"She wants me," Gideon says, ignoring him and jabbing her fork at Ianthe. "She wants me so _bad_. It's, like. Psychological." That's not right. "Pathological, I mean. Pathological."

When she tries to get up, Gaius taps two fingers on the table and she's stuck in her chair. Fine. Maybe she didn't want to get up just yet. That's entirely possible.

"May I be excused?" she mumbles. "Can I go to my room?"

"Not quite yet," he says. "Ianthe and I wanted to talk to you, kiddo. That's going to happen, come —"

Ianthe snickers.

"Come what?" Gideon asks. "Hell or high water? Because both those already came. Here we are."

"Droll," he says and actually winks. "Nicely done."

Gideon groans, long and loud. "Get on with it, Father Death."

"Stop being such a whiny little brat," Ianthe puts in.

Gideon flips her off. "No one asked you."

"I did," Gaius says. "A little respect is all I ask."

She kicks the table leg, then slouches so far down in her chair, with her legs spread so far apart, she's probably violating every law of skeletal cohesion.

"Your attitude needs some serious adjustment," he continues, sounding as calm and unruffled as ever. "Under this roof, in my house, I expect —"

She blows a raspberry. "Keep dreaming."

" _We_ expect," Ianthe puts in. 

Gaius doesn't react to that. He leans forward, hands clasped between his knees. Here comes the change in tack, from Threatening Patriarch to Buddy-buddy Dad Chum. "You can come to us about anything. We're here for you. We just want the best for you."

Gideon laughs and can't stop. She doesn't want to stop. She laughs and wheezes and hiccups, feels her eyes burn and nose stuff up.

"This is such a nasty incestuous tangle, don't you think? Delicious! Or poisonous, I don't fucking know."

"Language," Gaius says.

She keeps laughing. He keeps drawing her into these stupid absurd conversations that _don't mean anything_. She presses the heels of her hands against her eyes and tries to catch her breath, but the laughter's too much.

"Just listen to him," Ianthe tells her, making her eyes wide and innocent. She probably thinks she's helping, in her own weaselly awful way. "What's the worst that could happen?"

"Worse than this?" Gideon manages to say, hysteria lifting her to her feet, so she's pacing again. She's caged and captive all over again, inside Harrow's body and inside this nightmare house. _This wasn't supposed to happen any more_. "Oh, sister-mom-fuckbuddy, let me tell you —"

"Sit," Gaius says, "the fuck down."

"Nope!" She's moving and that's something, even if it's just to chart the dimensions of her captivity. "Won't, can't, shan't!"

He reverts to an earlier tactic, all understanding and coaxing. "You sound upset. Why don't we talk about that?"

"Nothing to talk about!" She pushes off from the bookcase and careens against the foyer wall before bouncing past the dining table. 

"I don't want to be here! This is all on you, you affable bastard!"

"Gideon." He pinches his temple, looking pained. "Please."

"I didn't ASK to be conceived with stolen evil spunk and carried in the womb of someone who hated me and wanted nothing more than to slit my throat to get back at you!" Shouting like this empties her lungs and scratches up her throat and it's nothing as good as punching or slashing, but it's much better than nothing. "I didn't ASK to get born in coldest of the eight cold hells and kicked around like baby necro's first wibbly ball-and-socket joint for my whole life!"

He closes his bottomless black eyes for a moment. His eyelids are delicate, almost crepey. Ianthe rubs his back and manages to look resentful about it, like she's saying _look what you're making me do_. "You're angry. That's understandable."

Gideon knocks into the wall. The ugly family portrait, with its background of blue sky and fat cumulus clouds, rattles, then falls to the floor. She stomps on it and grinds the heel of her Docs into the glass.

She's not laughing, or crying, any longer. She doesn't need to shout, either.

"No, that's the thing, Pops. I'm not angry. I'm... _disappointed_."

The certainty in his expression trembles, just for a millisecond.

"It's like I have to do _everything_ around here," Gideon says. "Basically raise myself. Adults fucking suck. Parents just don't understand. You've got to fight for your right to party. Papa don't preach. And so forth."

She cannot say _how_ she suddenly understands. Probably Harrowhark's genius leaking in, because Gideon herself is not given to subtle analysis of complicated situations.

To put it mildly.

But understand she does. It's in the flicker of their gazes, the slightest hint of unease in his posture, Ianthe's shrill...everything. How they're looking at her with something like fear or worry. Or maybe it was none of those clues. Maybe her understanding is born simply from her own frustration, breaking out of her skull fully-formed and pissed-off.

They aren't keeping her prisoner here. They want her to believe that they are — out of arrogance? Shame? Who knows and, more important, who fucking cares?

She rears back, pulling up her hand into the sleeve of her black hoodie, and throws herself, elbow first, against the bay window. The view outside is the same as it ever was — small cropped lawn and broad driveway, repeated five times around the cul de sac — but disgusting river lymph floods through the broken window. It sloshes around her boots as she kicks out the rest of the glass.

"See ya," she says over her shoulder as she climbs out. "Wouldn't want to be ya."

**Author's Note:**

> [title source](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CuZARbr8o4) ;)


End file.
